Profiles in Resilience #1
Service to others. This is the life they have known and lived.
He worked for 33 years as a public official. For more than a decade, he continued to work through the inconveniences of Parkinson’s disease. Always quick with a joke or a one-liner, his smile stretches from ear to ear and he is difficult not to like. Through the ups and downs, he has tried many medications and treatments. With humor, determination, persistence…and his wife’s help, he has lived well, even with a disease he didn’t anticipate.
She has worked for a local university, as a Long Term Care Community Director and generally in roles of servant leadership. When her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, she and a friend whose husband was also diagnosed with the same disease started one of the first Parkinson’s Support Groups in the state. She still co-leads that group, offering education and community to many families with the same struggle. Always inquisitive, she searches for new solutions and new resources to share with others.
Together, they have done it all. From education conferences to innovative exercise and treatments, they have refused to give up. And they have done it all with an underlying drive to serve others.
Resilience isn’t always flashy. But with endurance and the determination to live well through difficult circumstances, the Davenports give us an admirable profile in resilience.
Worth Repeating
Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.
-Angela Duckworth, Author of Grit
